'A miracle': Girl survives near-death experience after her hair got tangled in hot tub filter system
JAGUARUNA, BRAZIL: A girl had to fight underwater for more than a minute after her hair became tangled in a hot tub filter system. The girl can be seen urgently attempting to free her hair in CCTV footage of the incident in order to raise her head above the water's surface and breathe.
On March 19, Betina, 8, was playing with her cousin in the hot tub adjacent to a pool in Jaguaruna, a city in southern Brazil. In the video the other child appears helpless while her cousin thrashes around underwater and how none of the adults in the room seem to notice the girl's predicament.
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'It was a miracle'
Amazingly, one adult can be seen entering the hot tub only a few feet away from Betina, but it takes some time before she appears to realize there is a problem and steps in to help. Once the other grownups realize what is happening, they all dive into the pool one at a time. They ultimately succeed in freeing the girl by pulling on her. Betina had been submerged for one minute and 25 seconds at that moment, and when she was released, she was unresponsive and missing vital signs. She received CPR from her father and the nephew of her mother, and as a result, the girl immediately recovered.
She was reportedly left with no long-term repercussions from the prolonged lack of air, according to Yahoo News. "My daughter was pulled unconscious from the whirlpool tub," her mother Daniela Garcia told local media. "Cardiopulmonary resuscitation and mouth-to-mouth breathing were performed, and she was revived. She is okay, thank God. It was a miracle, and we don't want any other family to go through the horror we experienced."
Similar incident inside of a spa jet
A similar incident occurent in 2020 when an 8-year-old girl's hair got tangled inside of a spa jet in Texas. The 8-year-old's mother remembered the time her daughter was taking a bath and submerged her head in the water to rinse her hair. “The suction valve quickly sucked her hair through the holes in the suction cover, pinning her under the water,” Adrienne Exum wrote. “We wanted to share here because we’ve never even thought of something like this happening and we want others to be aware,” Exum shared on Facebook.